Luke Donald the latest to join the ‘Tiger Era is over’ brigade

Your weekly golf-weighs-in-on-Tiger report comes to us today from world No. 1 Luke Donald, who, in the midst of an interesting interview over at PGATour.com, offers up some not-so-surprising thoughts about Mr. Woods:

"It's going to be very hard to get back to the level he was at. He's had some physical issues and some mental issues dealing with the scandal he went through and being away from the game for so long. It makes it very hard. Having the injury and the mental scarring that went with being away from the game and not being that successful for a couple years does take [confidence] away from you. I would imagine he'll win again; I'm just not sure he'll dominate like he did."

When asked about whether we were now in a new era of golf, Donald replied,

"Yeah, I think so. Even [though] Tiger's only 35, there are a lot of young guys coming up -- Rory McIlroy and Keegan Bradley and a bunch of others. I would assume a new era is upon us. I'm not sure we'll see someone who dominated like Tiger, but maybe a bunch of people."

Which is, you know, pretty much what everybody else has been saying for several months now. (Somehow Donald's quote has gotten mangled into "The Tiger Era is over," which is not exactly what he said but close enough.)

Still, before everyone leaps on Donald for being too mouthy with exactly zero majors to his credit, take a look at this other quote: "As much as I believe there's no limit to what I can achieve, I understand it's unlikely at my age I'm ever going to achieve what Tiger's achieved." He was speaking of the expectations placed on anyone with the No. 1 ranking, which, granted, are pretty outlandish thanks to Woods.

Still, he probably ought to win a major or two, just to remove doubts about his validity at the top of the rankings. Anyway, it's a good interview and well worth a few minutes of your time. Check it out.